


Language in AtLA

by rhododaktylos_yue



Series: Language in Avatar [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Academic, Accents, Ancient History, Culture, Dialect, Gen, Historical Background, Inuktitut, Japanese, Language, Mandarin, Meta, Thai Language, Worldbuilding, Writing Systems, air nomad cultural background, earth kingdom cultural background, fire nation cultural background, language primer, languages of avatar, reference, tibetan, water tribe cultural background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhododaktylos_yue/pseuds/rhododaktylos_yue
Summary: I noticed a lot of my fellow fic writers were wanting to include details about language differences in their Avatar: the Last Airbender fics, but didn't really know how to do it. As someone who has studied languages for many years at the undergraduate and graduate level, and has worked with many students who were trying to learn English, I thought maybe I could put together a guide on how to respectfully show that these characters come from different linguistic backgrounds. I am not an expert on all of these languages; I merely have a bit of experience researching languages and putting together how they work. If anyone has any corrections, I am open to them.Also, since it cannot be stated too many times, the aim is to be RESPECTFUL. Think carefully about what you are creating and how it might hurt someone.
Series: Language in Avatar [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985944
Comments: 15
Kudos: 52





	1. Water and Earth

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter gives an overview of:  
> The Water Tribe  
> \- Implications for Sokka and Katara  
> \- The Swampbenders  
> The Earth Kingdom  
> \- Ba Sing Se  
> \- Toph Beifong and Gaoling  
> \- Kyoshi Island  
> \- Jet and the Freedom Fighters  
> \- The Sandbenders

Some of this will be based on actual languages and how they were formed; when necessary, I’ll give historical context or explain the pressures languages might face. Some of this will be from my imagination, and I’ll note that, too. Overall, these are just my headcanons and you can adapt them for your own fics as you see fit.

There’s an argument to be had here about pronunciation and pronunciation difficulties, because the show is in English as are most fics, and English has different sounds and such than other languages, but the characters themselves wouldn’t be speaking English within the narrative. Therefore, most of these difficulties can be disregarded unless you’re writing a modern AU where the characters are actually speaking English. Therefore, the only places where I will mention pronunciation difficulties are with character’s names.

A word of caution: Please refrain from overemphasizing people’s difficulties with language. It’s incredibly difficult to learn another language, and phonemes - the sounds languages are made up of - are hard to learn after childhood. I myself am not a great source of advice on this point, since I’m a native English speaker, but it is very easy to convey someone with a non-native accent as  _ other _ . These details I’m providing are meant to enrich your worldbuilding, not provide fodder for jokes. Please be respectful.

There’s also an illusion that nomadic cultures or cultures without writing systems are “less advanced”; nothing could be further from the truth. The Western world has done a spectacular job of taking over everything and then defining themselves as the pinnacle of culture, that which should be strived for, disavowing every one of their weaknesses as unimportant. This is false.

Likewise, no language or dialect is more or less advanced, they are only perceived to be so. High prestige and low prestige are a matter of perception, not reality.

Any of these headcanons are free for the taking, and I welcome further discussion! If anyone has corrections to make, or if you want more information about something, please don’t hesitate to come talk to me!!!

**Overview: Water and Earth**

Each of the four nations likely had a different language to begin with, or else developed four distinct languages over time, from one ancestor language. These languages then got further divided as different barriers to language sharing appeared and these isolated communities developed their own languages.

The Water Tribe is obviously Inuit/Yupik, with two distinct dialects that emerged from the hundred year isolation of the war. Truthfully, they could be called separate languages at this point, but since they are sister tribes they would likely still call them dialects; the distinction between dialect and language is largely arbitrary anyway, and depends more on the relationship the speakers have with each other.

The Earth Kingdom should be based primarily on Chinese (Mandarin, specifically), because they would be the nation best suited to invent paper and therefore have a cheap and easy means for dissemination of information across the four nations. This would result in the Chinese writing system also being disseminated and becoming the main mode of writing in most places, as we see in the show.

**The Water Tribe**

As mentioned before, the Southern Water Tribe and the Northern Water Tribe likely had similar languages before the war, but found themselves separated for a hundred years. This made the two languages diverge a bit, and they’re still mutually intelligible, but Sokka and Katara probably sounded a bit odd to the NWT people.

Neither tribe would really have much access to paper, either; if they can trade, they can get paper from the Earth Kingdom. Otherwise, if they can create the right conditions - which is a big if - they might use vellum, which is animal skin that’s been scraped and stretched and eventually becomes paper-like. The resulting paper still has the imprint of the spine of the animal, if you hold it up to the light, and the paper would be better suited to our current notion of book binding than other kinds of paper; Water Tribe books would look the most like a modern hardbacks, out of all the books we might see in the A:tLA universe. Unfortunately, this paper-making process is also incredibly slow and would make paper-making an extremely costly endeavor. It’s unlikely that anyone in the SWT would go to such lengths during the war, and in the NWT, books would be rare and expensive.

Sokka and Katara are able to read, though, it seems, and might have learned from carefully-preserved books acquired before the war and practiced by carving the letters into the snow. However, it would not be unrealistic for them to not be great at reading, given the resources they grew up with.

Instead, stories might’ve been passed down in their tribe through woven blankets in addition to oral tradition.

The Tjapwurung, an aboriginal people in Australia, have oral traditions which can accurately recount as far back as 10,000 years ago. Like the Water Tribes, the Tjapwurung inhabit a harsh terrain and need accurate accounts of past disasters to keep from experiencing or falling prey to them again, and A:tLA has already used aboriginal Australian culture as inspiration for the Water Tribes before, with Sokka’s favored weapon.  [ This article ](https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/) about the Tjapwurung is pretty good, if you’re at all interested in how they verified the information.

The Water Tribes might have designated storytellers like the Tjapwurung have, whose job it was to remember the stories, which were then taught to the entire tribe, and passed on to the next generation’s designated storyteller. They would also cross-check their stories between the two tribes, to make sure the stories hadn’t changed at all. Sokka and Katara likely learned these stories combined with songs and dances that warn about the signs of an incoming storm or things like that. The dances in the SWT might have similarities to southern style waterbending, and same with the NWT and their style. 

The tribes might even have stories about the days of Raava and Vaatu and the lion turtles; the SWT might’ve lost this with the war, and part of the healing after the war would be relearning these stories from the North. Yue might’ve learned some of the history she tells Sokka and Katara from the designated storyteller, and Unalaq might have known about Raava and Vaatu from the stories, too. Overall, these traditions would be a great way to enhance and expand upon the lore of the show.

From here it gets a little complicated, I apologize. I’ll try to explain as clearly as possible.

The other thing which would make learning Chinese writing difficult for people from the Water Tribe, aside from lack of paper and a strong oral tradition, is that Inuktitut - the Inuit language - is an agglutinative language. Agglutinative languages take a root word, usually a verb, and then build upon that word with other morphemes - the smallest unit of language that can carry meaning - which help specify what is doing the verb, what is receiving the action of the verb, and would include any information like adjectives and adverbs, etc, until a single word could be a complex sentence. (Yupik is the same, by the way, and choosing Yupik as the linguistic influence instead changes none of this, and nothing in the Implications section.)

A central Nunavut Inuktitut example from the  [ Inuit Language Wikipedia page ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_languages) , to illustrate what I mean:

**Tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujunga.**

_ I cannot hear very well. _

This long word is composed of a root word  _ tusaa- _ "to hear" followed by five suffixes:

**-tsiaq-**

| 

"well"  
  
---|---  
  
**-junnaq-**

| 

"be able to"  
  
**-nngit-**

| 

"not"  
  
**-tualuu-**

| 

"very much"  
  
**-junga**

| 

1st pers. singular present indicative non-specific  
  
Each of these things - the root and the suffixes - are all morphemes. There’s reasons why we separate words the way we do, mostly based on when a speaker pauses to breathe, but yeah. Basically, Inuktitut makes entire sentences that are one single word. 

Chinese… does not. Chinese is what’s known as an analytical language, which means that each morpheme is a separate word. English is a mostly analytic language, but we still add endings to verbs to change the tense and add prefixes and suffixes, sometimes.

Chinese characters work well  _ for Chinese _ because of the fact that morphemes are separated from each other. The characters can represent a single morpheme, and there’s no need to ever combine them to make a longer word.

The  **TLDR** is that Inuktitut and Mandarin are different enough that it’d be almost impossible to adapt Chinese characters to ever write Katara and Sokka’s native language; if the Water Tribes want to write their language, they’d have to invent a new system, which they’d be unlikely to do with their limited access to paper. In more prosperous circumstances than wartime they might invent an alphabet or a syllabary (see the Kyoshi Island section for more information on syllabaries). Alternatively, you could choose another language for the Water Tribes to speak, but if you do, none of these subsequent implications apply. (I’d be happy to talk that option through with you, too, if you need to know what to look for and how it’d affect the characters’ speech.)

Sokka could, of course, bring the Kyoshi Island syllabary to the Southern Water Tribe, which would be an interesting way for his relationship with Suki to have repercussions far into the future, and would fit into Sokka’s arc about unlearning his toxic masculinity and learning the ways of the Kyoshi Warriors. Again, see the Kyoshi Island section for more information.

**Implications for Sokka and Katara**

In order to be literate at all, Katara and Sokka would have to be bilingual, although the argument could be made that they’re not fully literate and mostly learned a few of the most useful characters. They probably speak both Inuktitut and Mandarin, though.

However, depending on how much they’ve practiced Mandarin, they might not be great at tones, which might identify them as outsiders in the Earth Kingdom.

They also might have trouble with some sounds that are common in Mandarin but not in Inuktitut; Inuktitut has three vowel sounds, where Mandarin has five, and Mandarin has several consonants that don’t exist in Inuktitut. How much trouble Sokka and Katara would have is dependent on how young they were when they began learning Mandarin. If they were younger than five or six, they might not have problems at all; older than eight, and speaking Mandarin is likely to be exhausting for them. The overall impression would be the Water Tribe accent.

“Toph” is the most difficult-to-pronounce major name in the show, from a strictly linguistic perspective, and Katara and Sokka would also experience difficulties with the name; since Inuktitut doesn’t have an /f/ sound, Toph’s name would be pronounced with a /v/ sound at the end instead until they got used to pronouncing it.

Last note about the Water Tribes: the Southern Water Tribe probably doesn’t have dialects, and everyone speaks the same and is considered equal. No one’s speech is seen as more or less prestigious. Part of the culture shock of the Northern Water Tribe, then, would be that some of the people speak different dialects, and the nobles demonstrate their nobility by the way that they speak. The blatant class divisions would be jarring for kids who grew up with no class divisions, and where the position of chief isn’t hereditary, as I headcanon the SWT to be merit-based. This point on class divided by dialect will return again in the Fire Nation.

**The Swampbenders**

The Swampbenders’ language would be near incomprehensible to just about everybody, given how long they’ve been isolated from the rest of the world. They also would be monolingual, meaning they wouldn’t be able to understand anyone else, either. The language gap between Swampbenders and everyone else could lead to the (false) impression that Swampbenders are not very intelligent.

Drawing from the Vinland Sagas and some of the documented history of the Europeans meeting the Aztecs, it seems that when two groups with a limited ability to converse happen across each other, misunderstandings are understandably frequent. The two groups are left to try to explain each other’s actions and will often judge the others to be irrational compared to themselves.

While obviously the Gaang’s encounter with the swampbenders is less judgmental (and certainly less loaded with historical baggage), it’s entirely possible that the Gaang drew the conclusion that the swampbenders were oafish because they didn’t possess the ability to express complicated ideas in a language the Gaang could understand, and the narrative is told from the Gaang’s perspective, so we see the swampbenders the way they did. If you were to look from the swampbenders’ perspective, though, the Gaang might be oafish and dim-witted, again because of the language gap.

Both groups are intelligent, capable beings, though. Any language you choose for the swampbenders should be fine.

**The Earth Kingdom**

The Earth Kingdom is very large and it is likely that there were many separate tribes for a very long time; therefore, some people spoke Japanese or Korean, and even amongst Chinese languages there was Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and far more.

Near where Ba Sing Se is now, though, some Mandarin-speaking scholars invented the Four Treasures of the Study: the brush, the ink, the paper, and the inkstone. In real life, there have been three major kinds of paper: papyrus paper invented in Egypt (as will be discussed in the Sandbender section), paper made from animal hides (as discussed in the Water Tribe section), and paper made from rice or trees, which was the cheapest and easiest to produce and to adapt for different climates. The Earth Kingdom invented this third option and quickly spread it across their nation, and then merchants of all nations brought it home with them. For the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads, this led to them being able to make paper; the Water Tribes could only import it, for the time being.

The Chinese characters traveled with the paper, and began first as images which designated things such as wheat or moo-sows for accounting purposes, and gradually developed into the more complex system of images that over time became the Chinese characters. As said before, these characters were then spread across the Earth Kingdom and on to the other nations via trade.

It should be noted that the use of Chinese characters does not indicate that the entire Earth Kingdom adopted the Chinese language or even a dialect thereof. Chinese characters can be adapted for many languages to use; unlike an alphabet, characters represent an  _ idea  _ and don’t carry any information about sound at all. The word for fire -  火 \- is pronounced  _ huo  _ in Chinese. The Japanese borrowed the symbol to still mean fire but used their own native word,  _ hi _ ; these Chinese characters are called kanji. Korean even borrowed these characters as hanji, and associated the symbols with their own words (although not with the character for fire, as far as I know).

Then there’s the problem of abstract words, words which can’t easily be expressed by an image. The Chinese language has a LOT of homophones (words that sound like another word), and so for Mandarin speakers, abstract words can be expressed with an image associated with a homophone word. So for example, if the word for  _ tree  _ sounds like the verb  _ wash _ ,  _ wash  _ might be written with the symbol for  _ tree _ , and there might be a small symbol near the character to indicate that the meaning being expressed has to do with water. For languages without as many homophones - ie, any language that isn’t Mandarin - the character writing system would likely need to be supplemented by a system which allows such abstract words to be conveyed. Korean and Japanese both might provide examples, if you need them.

**Ba Sing Se**

The Mandarin spoken in Ba Sing Se has historically influenced the larger Earth Kingdom, especially because Mandarin is used as a lingua franca through the Earth Kingdom. (A lingua franca is a language which everyone learns in order to communicate with each other when they have different native tongues. English is currently a lingua franca in many parts of the world, including on a lot of the internet, but Mandarin serves as a lingua franca in China.)

Ba Sing Se University teaches all its classes in Mandarin, and it’s considered the prestige language in the Earth Kingdom, meaning higher-status characters are more likely to speak it.

To take this further as a potential worldbuilding detail, during the hundred year war the Dai Li insisted that all students need to be educated on the proper way to speak, and so schools in Ba Sing Se are very strict, punishing students for using any sort of slang or dialect. This has resulted in the citizens of Ba Sing Se speaking a frozen, unchanging dialect of Mandarin that’s increasingly out of touch with the rapidly changing languages spoken by the refugees in Ba Sing Se. This could be used to increase the tensions between the denial of the hundred year war and the influx of refugees into the city, and be another way for the authoritarianism in Ba Sing Se to express itself. For more reference on things like this, research English First in Singapore.

Jet, Zuko, and Iroh might stick out as refugees because of their language use, and Zuko and Iroh might struggle to sound like they’re from the Earth Kingdom at all, adding another layer of things they have to constantly worry about.

**Toph Beifong and Gaoling**

Toph’s family would be fluent in the Chinese character system of writing, although obviously Toph herself would not be. Regardless of whatever local language is spoken in her hometown of Gaoling, Toph would be expected to know Mandarin as well. Since Mandarin is a tonal language, Toph might incorporate tones into non-tonal languages, depending on how much she spoke Mandarin at home. For reference on tones, it’s best to listen to examples.

If you want Toph to speak a tonal language as her native language, too, then Gaoling could speak Vietnamese or Cantonese. Her name would probably be tonal in that case, although since it’s not a real name as far as I know, you can probably invent a tone for it.

It’s implied in the show that Toph has better hearing than most people, understandably, so she might be better than most at learning new languages, and her parents might have actually supported that; if Toph is going to heal her relationship with her parents, language might be a thing with which they can express distance or intimacy in the household. She might be the best at understanding Zuko’s accent and mimicking his accent or speaking in his language, other than perhaps Aang, something that makes him feel slightly more comfortable when he arrives at the Western Air Temple and gives them an immediate bond.

In summary, Toph is good at languages and has good pronunciation in the languages she knows, but she would have an accent to her voice not unlike Mandarin speakers sometimes do when speaking English, with the same quality to her intonation. If anyone has the ability to disguise their accent, though, it would be her.

**Kyoshi Island**

In the south near Kyoshi island in the lifetime of Avatar Kyoshi, Chinese characters and their use might have been restricted to men alone. When Avatar Kyoshi founded the Kyoshi warriors, she strove not only to empower the women she trained with physical might but also with an ability to learn and record their own history, separate from a reliance on men.

Since Kyoshi and her area spoke Japanese, they created the hiragana system, a syllabary. (This actually mirrors the creation of hiragana in real life, btw! Hiragana was considered “women’s writing” for a long time, and many early Japanese female authors wrote in hiragana.) A syllabary is a writing system which expresses sounds, but unlike an alphabet a syllabary expresses syllables.

Syllable structure is explained further in the Syllable Structure section of the second part of this essay, but for now note that some syllables are considered more complex than others. All languages have the simplest syllables, which are just a vowel (V) or just a consonant with a vowel after it (CV). Some languages have only these kinds of syllables, and for the most part, Japanese is one of those languages.

Since there are a limited number of syllables in Japanese, the writing system can easily correlate a single symbol with a single syllable. The hiragana system has 46 symbols total, and again, each of them stands for a V or CV syllable. Here’s an example of five such symbols: 

na ni ne no nu

な に ぬ ね の

You might notice that if you put these symbols together, there’s not really a way to put consonant sounds next to each other, and there’s no way to end a syllable with a consonant, either. There is one symbol -  [ ん ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%93) \- which makes the /n/ sound, but other than that all syllables end in vowels. The solution most Japanese speakers use when they encounter consonant clusters or final consonants in a foreign language is to insert a vowel after every consonant.

Toph’s name would be hard for Suki for two reasons: Japanese doesn’t have tones, and again, Japanese doesn’t allow syllables ending in the phoneme /f/. Suki might initially say “tofu” or “tofa” and gradually, with practice, learn to say Toph. She might also have the same process with Aang. (This might be why the little girls of Kyoshi Island call him ‘Aangy.’)

Last note on the Kyoshi accent, Suki might have trouble saying Katara and Ty Lee’s names, because in Japanese there is neither  _ l _ nor  _ r _ but a sound that’s sort of in between. You might be familiar with the soft drink Ramune, which was based on Lemonade, and is kind of the best approximation which Japanese allows for this exact reason. A listener unfamiliar with Katara might not know if Suki is saying Katara or Katala, Ty Lee or Ty Ree. Sokka and Zuko’s names would not be a problem.

**Jet and the Freedom Fighters**

Jet and his Freedom Fighters come from different towns in the Earth Kingdom, and probably ended up combining all their languages and accents to create a pidgin language. A pidgin language is a language made in the contact between different languages; the resultant pidgin is usually part language A, part language B, plus some invented words and structures.

Honestly, since they’re kids and belong to a close-knit, isolated community, they would constantly be inventing slang in addition to words they kept from their previous languages; think of groups of friends with inside jokes, where perhaps a single word becomes code for the joke, and all you need to say is “strawberry” and everyone’s on the floor laughing.

Their rapidly shifting pidgin language would mark them as a family, but there are many directions you could take this metaphor: perhaps they’re kids finding family in each other, and the new language they’re creating stands for what they can build together, that they’re united not by anger but by what they mean to each other.

Or, like Jet’s clothes - a mishmash of colors - and the kids’ fake names, this could be used to indicate that these kids have lost their identity and no longer know who they are; they’re fighting out of loyalty to a home they don’t remember. The more they devote themselves to Jet’s cause, the more they’re giving up the home they had before, and some of them can’t remember the languages they spoke with their parents.

They might also have developed a system of bird calls, as we see in the show, which could be used to communicate across long distances; these calls would have simple, clear meanings like “firebender spotted.”

**The Sandbenders**

The Sandbenders’ speech could be based on Arabic, as much of their culture is. Arabic actually has a ton of dialects, in part because it has a long history and a lot of speakers, and has influenced many other languages. However, to fit with the show, it could be a language isolate, which is a language which has no related languages.

Arabic has a lot of consonant sounds that would be foreign to the Gaang, and would make the sandbenders sound very different to anyone they’d ever heard before.

However! Say that there’s a river in the desert; a logical presumption, since the sandbenders would need a source of water other than the tiny oasis the Gaang visits. Then say that some reed plants grow along this river, and now the sandbenders have a means of making our third kind of paper. They soak the reeds, stretch them, layer them in a woven pattern, and let that dry. This is arguably the easiest method of making paper which has yet been listed, and it’d be reasonable to say the sandbenders would have plenty of said paper. And, bonus, paper lasts a while in a desert, and is easier to store than stone tablets, very valuable for a nomadic culture that still might want to keep accounting records. This paper would be stored as scrolls.

Through experimentation, they might start with ideograms, like the Chinese characters. They draw wheat, a moo-sow, etc. Then, if they’re at all like the Ancient Canaanites, they start using these symbols to represent the first sound in the word. If the word for moo-sow starts with an  _ m  _ sound, the little drawing of the moo-sow now represents the sound  _ m _ . (This sort of leap wouldn’t be out of the question for the Water Tribes, but it’s more likely when you have access to paper.)

Basically, the sandbenders have an alphabet. Well, sort of. It’s called an abjad, and it doesn’t include vowels at all; you have to fill those in yourself, based on your knowledge of the language.

Another reason why it’s much more likely for the sandbenders to have the abjad, in comparison to everyone else, is that they potentially have access to Wan Shi Tong’s library. If they’re allowed to read the books, which is admittedly a big if, then they can see and adopt any previous alphabet and make it suit their own language.

In terms of particular sounds which might be difficult for the sandbenders, Arabic is one of the few world languages that does not include the sound /p/, as in Appa. Traditionally, Arabic uses one of two solutions: an /f/ or a /b/. Either would work, but choose one and stick to it. Arabic, like Inuktitut and Japanese, is not a tonal language, and would sound flat and monotonous to Toph.


	2. Fire and Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I noticed a lot of my fellow fic writers were wanting to include details about language differences in their Avatar: the Last Airbender fics, but didn't really know how to do it. As someone who has studied languages for many years at the undergraduate and graduate level, and has worked with many students who were trying to learn English, I thought maybe I could put together a guide on how to respectfully show that these characters come from different linguistic backgrounds. I am not an expert on all of these languages; I merely have a bit of experience researching languages and putting together how they work. If anyone has any corrections, I am open to them.
> 
> Also, since it cannot be stated too many times, the aim is to be RESPECTFUL. Think carefully about what you are creating and how it might hurt someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gives an overview of:
> 
> The Fire Nation  
> \- High Court  
> The Air Nomads  
> \- The Fire Nation / Air Nomad Pidgin Language  
> How to Do This Yourself  
> \- Pronunciation  
> \- Syllable Structure  
> \- Vocabulary  
> \- Questions to Ask Yourself

**Overview: Fire and Air**

Since the Fire Nation is based largely on China and Japan - nations I’ve already covered in the Earth Kingdom section - I have instead invented a language and outlined how it would affect the Fire Nation’s culture and the characters who speak the language. The language has bits of Sanskrit, Thai, and a bit of Japanese, all cultures which actually influenced the design of the Fire Nation. Please note that one of the existing problems with Avatar is that it mixes cultures without identifying its inspirations, leading to the impression that these cultures are interchangeable or that all of this is just East Asian culture, both impressions which erase South Asian and Southeast Asian culture. If you use this in fics, I’d suggest identifying your inspirations and including some South Asian or Southeast Asian OCs; I welcome feedback on how to make this guide more culturally sensitive, too.

The Air Nomads are clearly Tibetan, but given their culture it makes sense for them to borrow a great many words from other cultures, too.

There is also a guide at the end which explains some of how I came up with this, so that if your headcanons that differ from mine - as they inevitably will - you can realistically add subtle linguistic details to your writing, too, based on where you want to draw your inspiration from. The guide covers pronunciation, so that you can figure out what the characters’ accents would sound like, as well as ways to show the nuances of a language’s vocabulary and what questions you should ask yourself in creating realistic language headcanons.

**The Fire Nation**

The Fire Nation has, since the war began, emphasized only the native Fire Nation language in its schools. Its children are expected to be monolingual, and this would extend to the colonies as well, where colonials born into Earth Kingdom families might find themselves discouraged from speaking their native language. Assimilation schools might be a good thing to research if you want to know more about what life might be like for these colonists, but tread carefully, as such schools are still a very painful memory for many people. Fire Lord Zuko would disband these schools or change their rules.

In the Fire Nation proper, with its regimented class system, there would be different dialects spoken by high-class citizens, middle-class citizens, and low-class citizens. The lowest prestige dialect would change fastest and most frequently, while the highest prestige dialect would change very, very slowly.

This is the part where I invent a language.

Since Agni is a Sanskrit word, let’s say that most of the vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit. We’ll also get our phonemes from Sanskrit, so that the sounds Zuko can make match the ones a Sanskrit speaker could make (although Sanskrit no longer has native speakers). This would probably mean that Zuko would use retroflex consonants. To make a retroflex consonant, curl your tongue back a little, touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and say “ta.” The sound you create is a retroflex /t/.

Such retroflex consonants would come up wherever there’s a t, d, n, r, and s. The consonants would be correctly articulated, but would sound just slightly different than from people with a different native language.

From Thai, we’ll take a lot of things, including tones, so Zuko’s native language is a tonal language, like Toph’s. This similarity in the way they speak might lead to a sense of familiarity, since both languages would have that changing intonation quality, compared to Sokka and Katara’s language, which, since it’s non-tonal (like English), would sound monotonous to them.

We’ll also take the addition of short words (known as particles) at the end of a sentence to indicate a request or to express respect for the listener, as well as the several registers, varying levels of formality depending on the situation. The main registers are vulgar, common, formal (used in academic settings), and high (see the section on the High Court dialect). The Fire Nation language is one which requires that you know your place. How much Zuko struggles with this could be used to show how he fits into the Fire Nation society and culture as it stands under Ozai.

Last but not least, from Japanese and Korean, the honorifics. The honorifics would be attached to the end of the person’s title and would change depending on the relative social statuses of the speaker to whoever they are speaking about, be it listener or third party. These honorifics are used to express due respect and would be mandatory in the school or the workplace. These honorifics existed before Sozin, but under Sozin and his successors, punishments for failing to use the honorifics correctly became harsher.

Overall, Zuko would have been raised in a situation where learning other languages was discouraged. He began learning new languages with his Uncle while searching for the Avatar - mostly to interrogate anyone with a potential lead - but didn’t feel a need to become truly fluent in any of them until they were on the run in the Earth Kingdom. He and Iroh were pretty good at faking their accents, but it was still an extra thing to think about and which could betray their true identities. They could easily slip up on a few sounds and get caught, especially since speaking a foreign language is usually exhausting; after a while, your throat and tongue get tired of the unfamiliar sounds they have to form. Zuko’s dramatic declarations of his title and ancestry, like in Zuko Alone, are in his full Fire Nation accent, though.

When Zuko’s at the palace in early season three, his voice fluctuates between Earth Kingdom accents and the Fire Nation accent to reflect his uncertainty, but he always speaks the Fire Nation language. His speech in the war room is perfect Fire Nation, for maximum effect, in the hopes that he’ll change their minds and make them see the Earth Kingdom citizens as people. This would also emphasize him inhabiting the role of the perfect son. His speech to his father on the Day of Black Sun is in a more natural accent for him, now tinged with Earth Kingdom intonations (like Toph’s). In that speech, he foregoes honorifics in a move that would be considered incredibly disrespectful, and it’s a tool with which he can further express his contempt for Ozai, like starting his speech with, “hey, bitch.” If you want to take this really far, he might use a lower register than would usually be appropriate in speaking to the Fire Lord.

When he arrives at the Western Air Temple, though, he begins to drift more towards the way the rest of the kids speak. It’s a sort of slow process, but it’s one that’s very common in immersion situations, especially for teenagers. Over time he’d eventually sound less and less Fire Nation and more like the others, whatever language he’s speaking in.

**High Court**

This section is based almost entirely on my friend’s fic, called  [ boy problems ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26205847) , but actually fits really well with how languages work and illustrates some interesting language pressures. The dialect is specific to Fire Nation nobles, and not being fluent in it would present a barrier to anyone trying to rise in status.

Most languages experience two pressures: to be as clear as possible, and to convey information as fast as possible. The pull between clarity and efficiency means most languages have redundancies to make meaning unambiguous.

In a situation in which you want the highest degree of plausible deniability, though, these pressures change. Clarity no longer matters; the game matters, and how well the speaker plays it. Ambiguity is the intended goal, with efficiency as a potential bonus.

The quickest way to create this desired ambiguity is through pronouns. Most languages have three singular pronouns, referring to me, you, and them. The dialect used by the High Court of the Fire Nation has one pronoun for first, second, and third person singular.

1st person singular

| 

I

| 

One  
  
---|---|---  
  
2nd person singular

| 

You

| 

One  
  
3rd person singular

| 

Him/Her/Them/It

| 

One  
  
“One has a request to make of the Fire Lord.” Here, “one” means “I”; I have a request.

“One would be pleased if one considered a marriage contract between one 1 of the Southern Water Tribe and one 2 of the Fire Nation.” Here, an example of an ambiguity emerges. (1) is intended by the speaker, Iroh, to mean Sokka, and (2) is intended to mean you, as in Zuko. Zuko thinks Iroh means (1) Hakoda and (2) Iroh.

See the fic linked above for more of this pronoun in action.

In order for this aspect of the dialect to work, High Court has dispensed with honorifics; “one” is considered sufficiently polite. The concept is that the use of the High Court dialect in and of itself expresses a fear of retribution from the listener, which Sozin, Azulon, and Ozai found flattering.

Another way to create ambiguity is to use double meanings. These double meanings are built into the lexicon itself. Most words double as euphemisms for sex or violence. Words like  _ experience  _ or  _ professional  _ are multipurpose. Some adjectives mean the opposite of themselves, like a single word which means both  _ kind  _ and  _ unkind _ , so that sarcasm is almost built into the language. Threats can therefore be easily veiled, as can scandalous implications. For fic writers, you can either use words which have double meanings in English, or note the multiple meanings of the word which the speaker used (see the Vocabulary section).

The third and final interesting feature, though, is that passive voice is used as frequently as active voice in High Court. The only indicator that passive voice is being used is a marker, pronounced “na,” which is placed after the object of the verb; unlike in English, the verb doesn’t change at all to indicate that it’s passive. This makes it harder to realize when someone is using passive instead of active. Since High Court is not a real language, though, and passive voice is often mistaught, I’ll explain what this means for your probably-English-language-fics which might use the High Court dialect. 

Any given sentence with a transitive verb usually has a noun which is doing the action of the verb (the subject) and a noun receiving the action of the verb (the object).

[Ozai] [fights] [the 12-year-old]

Ozai is the subject, and the 12-year-old is the object.

[The 12-year-old] [defeats] [Ozai]

This time, the 12-year-old is the subject, and Ozai is the object. These are both active sentences.

To make these sentences passive in English without changing the meaning, they become:

[the 12-year-old] [was fought] [by Ozai]

[Ozai] [was defeated] [by the 12-year-old]

But say that you’re some Ozai loyalist and you want to make Ozai look slightly better, you could leave out that last part and say “Ozai was defeated.”

Basically, passive voice is a way to hide who was doing the action of the verb. Sidenote, watch out for this in news articles, where they might take “the police shot the protestors” and make it “the protestors were shot” to make the police look innocent. (This is about May 4, 1970 at Kent State and has no relevance to any current events.)

To return to the topic at hand, High Court has passive voice structures which allow it to hide the perpetrator of violence or misdeed. Combined with the pronouns and the words with many meanings, the High Court dialect is rather incomprehensible, as any misunderstanding snowballs until you’re marrying your friend who you’re secretly in love with.

**The Air Nomads**

If you know anything about the English language’s history, you probably know that a vast majority of the vocabulary in English is borrowed from other languages, to the point that it’s a joke.

English ain’t got nothing on the Air Nomads.

Air Nomads would travel to other nations, learn the local language, and bring back their favorite bits of vocabulary and grammar. The resulting Air Nomad language changes so fast and in so many different directions that the four temples spoke entirely separate languages. The Air Nomads placed a lot of importance on treating everyone the same, though, so no prestige system to enforce social classes would ever develop amongst them. They also didn’t ever borrow honorifics.

The base grammar of the Air Nomad language resembled Lhasa Tibetan, or Standard Tibetan. Tibetan does have registers, like the Fire Nation, but to fit the Air Nomad culture, those registers could be more like a common vernacular for everyday speech and a kind of speech reserved for religious ceremonies. Tibetan also has tones, but fewer than Mandarin, and in words with multiple syllables, only the first syllable has a tone. This medium between tonal and non-tonal languages could reflect Aang’s central role in the cast and his status as the bridge between various cultures.

For similar reasons, Aang might be very good at learning new languages, especially as Air Nomads probably encouraged kids to learn as many languages as possible. Basically, Aang’s friendship with Kuzon and Bumi was a cultural exchange program with the purpose of fostering language skills and an appreciation for other nations.

The biggest thing that Aang would say oddly, if he says anything oddly at all, would be placing adjectives after the noun. Given how young he would have been when he learned other languages, he probably wouldn’t have problems with any specific sounds.

In terms of how the Air Nomads might write their language, they could use an abugida, like the Fire Nation; the Tibetan script is the abugida that Tibetan speakers use in real life. This would also imply a historical relationship between the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads, because both the Thai script and Tibetan script are abugidas descended from Brahmi script; at some point in their past, one of the countries probably borrowed the Brahmi script from the other.

**The Fire Nation / Air Nomad Pidgin Language: “Flameo, Hotman”**

Hotman began its life as an honorific, borrowed from the Fire Nation language into the pidgin language. The pidgin changed rapidly, like the Air Nomad language, and was mostly used by younger people. It’s littered with slang phrases and words borrowed from all over the world, but most of the vocabulary comes either from the Fire Nation language or the Air Nomad language, usually the lower, everyday registers. The pidgin probably wasn’t written down anywhere, because it was mostly used for casual conversation, but in letters between Aang and Kuzon they might have used one or both of the abugidas.

Also, just for fun, we’ll say  _ flameo  _ is like  _ aloha  _ or  _ ciao _ ; it’s both a hello and a goodbye, which is actually pretty common in many cultures.

Aang and Kuzon spoke this pidgin language together, but other than Aang, very few people alive at the time of the series remember it at all.

**How to Do This Yourself**

It’s entirely probable that your headcanons differ from mine, and I cannot possibly cover all bases, so a quick guide of what to consider when deciding what language quirks your characters might have:

_ Pronunciation  _

This one is simple, once you know how to do it: compare the IPA charts. These can be found in the phonology section of the wikipedia pages for most languages, and explain what sounds are found in a language. By comparing your character’s native language to the target language, you can figure out what sounds the character would have difficulty with. Admittedly, you do have to know IPA to do it, but if you’re familiar with the roman alphabet, it’ll probably be easy enough to pick up.

If a sound exists in the target language which is not in the native language, that sound will be hard to pronounce. The speaker would replace it with a similar sound that is in the native language; look for a sound that’s near the target sound on the chart.

(If there’s large enough demand, I can go through this in more detail, but don’t feel bad if you don’t get it. My explanation here is incomplete, I’m leaving out a lot of stuff.)

Also look to see if the language is tonal or non-tonal, since that will make a big difference in how the character sounds, and if you can, look at syllable structure.

_ Syllable Structure _

Some languages allow more complicated syllables than others. Note, V stands for vowel - any vowel sound - and C stands for consonant - any consonant.

The simplest syllable structure is V: just a single vowel sound.

The next most simple syllables are: CV.

Third: CVC.

Beyond that, you would have to have consonant clusters, or several consonants in a row. Consonant clusters are common in English but uncommon in most languages.

Examples of English words with consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable:  str ike (CCCVC),  sl am (CCVC),  str umming (CCCVC.VC),  tr ick (CCVC),  tr eat (CCVC).

Examples of English words with no consonant clusters: banana (CV.CV.CV), Mississippi (CV.CV.CV.CV), mini (CV.CV)

Spelling doesn’t really matter here, only how the word is pronounced. The periods (.) denote syllable boundaries.

Consonant clusters can also occur at the ends of syllables. Consonant clusters make syllables more complicated.

As a general rule, someone from a language with some more complicated syllables can pronounce less complicated syllables, but someone from a language with simpler syllables would have a hard time with more complicated syllables.

Speakers of languages which only allow V and CV, like Japanese, Hawaiian, and some Native American languages would feel the need to insert vowels between consonants in a cluster - CCC becomes CVCVCV - in order to make things easier to pronounce. This would be audible in the speaker’s accent.

Information about syllable structure is harder to find than information about phonology, but if you can find it, it’s a great detail to add.

_ Vocabulary  _

Very few languages have the exact same vocabulary. A single word in one language might have a few meanings in another language. Here’s an excerpt from an original fantasy story I never finished:

“Where are you from?” Neytali asked, amused.

“La Stellatissima Vetra, Nsukyenéman,” Amma said.

“Welcome to Guhrakalul.” Neytali grinned. “You should be brighter.”

The word which Neytali used could have meant more brilliant or resplendent. Neither translation made sense to Amma.

“What?”

Neytali pulled one of the trays of pigment closer to her. “May I?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Make you brighter.” There was that word again.  _ Onmai _ .

“Could you phrase that in a different way? I’m having trouble with that particular word.”

“I’m going to make you more colorful.” This time, Neytali used the term  _ cayam _ , which meant to paint or dye. Another translation might be,  _ I’m going to paint you _ , or  _ I’m going to paint on you _ .

“Oh. Does it wash out?” Amma asked.

“It lasts about a month.” At Amma’s hesitation, she added, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I like purple,” Amma said.

Neytali picked up the tray of purple powder, opened a jar of something like a lotion, and mixed a little bit of the lotion with the powder with her fingers. Then she pulled a strand of Amma’s hair. The strand stretched like a spring, and Neytali massaged the dye into the hair. When she released the strand, it sprang back, bright purple at the tip. Amma hadn’t expected the color to be such a vibrant violet in her dark, almost black hair, the hue stopping just shy of glowing.

Amma, a foreigner whose native languages are Abron and Venetian Italian but who speaks Ilakangur, has difficulty with the nuances of an Ilakangur word native speaker Neytali uses.

The idea is that by using this linguistic detail, it creates more of a sense that these languages are real and nuanced and have meaning. Translation is not and never will be a perfect practice. Languages are diverse and that diversity should be celebrated, and one way to do that is to add little bits about the untranslatable nature of some words or concepts.

_ Questions to Ask Yourself _

What relationship does the speaker have to the language? Do they know it well, or do they struggle? What opportunities has this character had to learn this language?

For the language itself, is this a culture that might value tradition, and seek to preserve older versions of the language? Is this a culture that likes class divisions? If so, there is likely a more “common” dialect and a slower-changing, more “formal” dialect, for the different classes. Or maybe this is a culture where progress and change are encouraged. 

The general guideline is that those with more status and wealth under the current system tend to prefer the status quo, and are less likely to support language change and development. Language innovations - new words and structures - are more likely to start and spread through the lower classes, who are not as invested in preserving the status quo; it all comes down to social power.

These questions might lead you to fascinating conclusions that can help you flesh out the world and the characters.

I can't wait to see what y'all create!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As before, I am open to answering questions, and I look forward to seeing what y'all create with this!
> 
> I have plans for future topics, but does anybody have any suggestions? Anything you'd love to know about?
> 
> Feel free to come talk to me on tumblr at arcticpoefinn <3

**Author's Note:**

> I am happy to answer any questions you might have about anything I've said here! If it seems necessary, I might edit the chapter for clarity, but I will leave the comment up.
> 
> Suggestions for future topics are welcome as well. :D


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